to sleep, perchance to dream?

I am STILL having weird dreams. I'll try fiddling around with when I take my drugs again, but I'm not sure it makes much difference. It's what happens to me in the early morning I can't take. It's more like hallucinations than dreams. I'm sleeping lightly, but as soon as I close my eyes I'm in dream world. It's as if I have to chose between being awake and sleepy or dreaming and confused. And the unreal stuff seems so real, so tangible. This morning I dreamed I was writing and when I opened my eyes my hand was waving about in the air, writing. So strange.

In other news. I am knitting lots. I've finished the fronts of a cardigan. I have an interview for a part time temp job tomorrow. It's only 8 hours a week, but I think it'll be a good first step back into working. On Friday I'm going to London to the 900th anniversary celebrations of the church I grew up in and went to until I went to uni. It'll be good to see some old friends again.

Life is weird, but God is good. I am still alive, and there are people who love and care for me, for which I am very grateful.

I need to make myself write more. Probably not on the blog, but I keep coming up with ideas I want to get down on paper and work out and then being too scared to sit down and write. So my head gets stuffed, and things don't get sorted out. Not good.

I think I'm scared of reading too. Which is daft. But it's like I can't read any serious books, because I won't understand them, or be able to talk about them properly. I'm not sure. But there's definitely fear there. I dreamt the other day that I was talking to someone about books and they started on a subject I knew nothing about - French poetry, I think - and I just had nothing to say, so I laughed and said something like, "I recognise all those words, but I have idea what you're talking about." Which is totally not what I'd do in real life. I'm a terrible bluffer; I hate to be wrong or to be found wanting. Maybe there's a solution there, to be able to admit when I don't know stuff and laugh about it. And learn. I may not know everything, but I want to. Is that a useful aim in life, or am I just setting myself up to fail? I suppose one can keep learning to the end of life.

What about beyond? Will we still be learning in eternity?

I shall stop now and lay my befuddled head down to sleep. And pray for deep and peaceful rest.

Thank you!

To the lovely anonymous person who paid my next month's rent: Thank you so much!

Thursday Thursday

I thought it was time the last rather plaintive post got moved off the top of the blog. Some days I'm OK, some days I'm not. Actually, the good days mostly outweigh the really bad days. But then not many days are free from hopeless moments.

Yesterday was good. I went swimming first thing in the morning with a couple of friends and then had breakfast in a cafe. I hadn't been swimming in ages and it was good to do some exercise and brilliant to spend breakfast chatting to Lizzie and Rachel. I was fairly worn out for the rest of the day though. I sometimes forget how tired I can get, do too much and wear myself out. It's frustrating. Still, it was good to be tired out by exercise rather than tired out by doing nothing.

I'm doing a lot of knitting, in between looking for and applying for jobs. I'm spending a lot of time on Facebook and reading blogs. I'm barely reading any books. That feels really strange. I've always been a bookworm, but now I seem to have gone off reading. Maybe my brain just needs a break. It's probably getting enough escapist entertainment from my dreams (still vivid, but mostly not scary unless I'm worrying about something.) I'm supposed to be having a break from studying, so I shall just wait and not force myself to read when I don't feel like it. It's just odd.

I don't know what to say

I am alive. I am breathing. I am sad. I am trying not to worry.

I'm going out for a stomp in the woods.

things I would like to do

A list written in the middle of last night when I couldn't sleep. Some of which are achievable, some of which are dreams.

• Find a job
• Do Pilates
• Lose weight
• Go to the gym
• Sing more
• Go to Rev again
• Take more photos
• Have a dinner party
• Laugh more
• Paint my wall
• Get rid of stuff I don't need
• Ride horses
• Find a husband
• Go dancing
• Go for more long walks in the countryside
• Walk to Ely
• Go swimming
• Cook for friends
• Go to parties and not be scared
• Go to parties and not stuff my face
• Listen to God more
• Sing prophetic songs
• Knit another jumper I wear as much as Forecast (Of which that is a very unflattering picture)
• Find some perfect jeans
• Make people happy
• Visit friends
• Go out and socialise more
• Not be scared
• Not be afraid or ashamed of being me

Friday, achey

It's been a strange week. I'm sure it must be Saturday already? I'm very very tired and achey, think I'm going down with something. :-(

Still, on the positive side, there have been lots of fun times with friends and family this week. I'm getting lots of sleep. I've hardly had to cook for myself all week. (Actually I mostly like cooking, but I've not had the energy for it much lately). I have filled in forms and registered with agencies. I'm not quite completely broke, yet. I have lots of lovely friends, here in Cambridge and elsewhere in the world.

Can I go back to sleep now?

what next?

I've had a few days of fun and relaxation. Now I'm back to being stressed again. The weird dreams seemed to have gone, before returning with a vengeance last night. I suspect the fact that I knew I was planning to start job-hunting properly today made me feel tense and my sub-conscious reacted by producing scary monsters and a set of disconcerting nested dreams I kept trying to shake myself awake from, with no success. Why does my brain do that? Just when I could do with a good night's sleep, it goes crazy and weird. :-(

Today, I have been mostly filling in temp agency forms and trying not to pick fights with Americans. Tonight, I'm helping Liz strip wallpaper. Tomorrow, who knows?

finishing things

Today I finished my last essay for a while. The next one is my dissertation, which I can't face at the moment, so I'm taking some time off and coming back to it in February. Or later. Or maybe never. Who knows. But today I filled in the forms to intermit for a semester.

Today I also finished the video editing and uploading I've been doing at the place I worked for until a year ago. So, approximately a year after I left, I actually finished working there.

Next week, I must start looking for a job in earnest. For the next few days I'm going to relax, sleep lots and generally flop.

technicolour dreaming

I have been having the weirdest dreams. Super-vivid glorious technicolour dreams directed by Cecil B. deMille or Busby Berkeley or George A. Romero. Dreams so vivid they seem more real then reality sometimes. I keep flashing back to things I remember and can't quite work out whether I dreamt them, or they really happened. So far, I've not misremembered or invented anything important, but it's getting harder to tell.

Sometimes my dreams are entertaining, mostly they're odd, occasionally they're downright disturbing and distressing. I wake up frightened in the middle of the night or so unsettled I can't sleep. In the morning, I'm more tired than when I went to bed. I almost dread going to sleep because I don't know what's going to greet me, monsters, wombats, shrinking houses, bullying armies or giant slides. For a while, it was funny, but now it's not. I'm not sleeping properly, I can't concentrate.

I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow and I'm going to tell her about my dreams and see what she suggests. I suspect it might be a side-effect of the anti-depressants I'm taking. If so, then perhaps switching to something else will make the dreams go away. I hope so.

a walk in the woods

There's a little patch of beech woods I've been visiting about once a week since about March this year. When I first went, the trees were bare and bleak, black silhouettes against a clouded sky. I've seen the first leaves appear, bright zinging green, seen them sway in the wind and shade me from the summer sun. I've been there in the rain, in the sunshine, on cloudy days. I've sat and been miserable there and been just about OK and been happy and been barely holding it together. I've drawn what I can see. I've drawn what I can't see. I've drawn how I feel. Now the trees are covered in dark green leaves, but I can see them beginning to turn yellow and brown. I'm looking forward to watching the autumn colours sweep across the trees. Already, there are blackberries on the brambles and beech masts crunching underfoot. There are brown speckled butterflies and huge snails climbing slender twigs and squirrels doing acrobatics. Once I stood under a tree and watched and listened to a blackbird singing on the topmost branch.

It's my place to be. Just be, breathe, watch, wait, listen.

holiday!

I'm off on holiday today! I'm getting a train to Wales. The sun is shining, right now. It's a good day.

I suspect I'm unlikely to post anything for the next fortnight. See you when I get back!

better wednesday

It's Wednesday again and I'm feeling OK. I've been sleeping better the last few nights and though I'm still very tired (and soooooo ready to go on holiday. Just a few more days to wait) I'm feeling positive. Yesterday I finished an essay (woo hoo!). I might try to finish another one by the end of the week. Not going to push it though. There are lots of little pottery things I want to do in the next couple of days (that's pottery as in pottering about, not pottery as in ceramics) like make a laptop case, tidy my room a bit, pack, obviously.

Yawn! So ready for a holiday!

I don't like wednesdays

Or they don't like me. Wednesday always seems to bring a dip in energy. Today I'm tired and tense. I didn't sleep very well last night or the night before. Last week, Wednesday was my worst day. Maybe my body objects to working more than two days in a row? I had two good getting up and going to the library days on Monday and Tuesday and now I'm flopping.

What have I done? I went for a walk in the woods, had a snooze, had some lunch. Maybe I'll venture out now.

sleepy thursday

sleepy thursday, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I should go to the library. But I'm sleepy.

ray of light

I've been away for a few days in Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey, where the family of my friend Lizzie have a holiday cottage. It's been wonderful. The sun shone, the sea was warm(ish), the beach was quiet. I've been doing lots of nothing much, sitting around reading books, playing a bit of tennis and scrabble, swimming in the sea, stroking the dog and lying in the sun.

It all felt like a lovely break from Cambridge and worry. I was so tired last week. I'm sleepy now, but in a relaxed sort of way, rather than feeling exhausted. Plus I had a long day travelling yesterday and my arm muscles are still aching from tennis. Today I'll take it easy, maybe get to the library this afternoon, but not try to do much. Tomorrow, back properly to my essay, which was going pretty well last week.

sleep, busy, sleep

That's not how life is supposed to be going, but sometimes it feels like it. How did it get to be Wednesday? I'm trying not to do too much, but still end up feeling exhausted by the end of the day. Sleep isn't exactly refreshing when you dream that you keep being woken up or beaten up by random people. (I think last night it was Billie Piper demanding that I tell her where to find the Doctor. Weird).

Today I went to the UL, which is a little energy-sapping in itself. At least it didn't nearly make me cry this time. I had a bit more of a clue about how the classmarks worked and managed to find what I needed first go. And I found the photocopiers and bought a card and copied the articles I wanted, so that's an achievement. Now I actually have to read what I've copied. Maybe not tonight though. Tonight I flop.

talk to the bear

talk to the bear, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I'm hiding in my cave.

sunday night in purple

sunday night in purple, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I remember reading a book in which the heroine (a princess) had amethyst eyes. The Ordinary Princess maybe? Or was her name Amethyst? Anyway, the idea appealed. My eyes aren't purple, of course. They're blue-grey, sometimes greenish, depending on the light and what I'm wearing. If I did have amethyst eyes, would I have to have green skin to match?

Sunday night photobooth

Sunday night photobooth - 4, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

It's Sunday night. I like Sundays. They're full of praise and worship and people and fun and general good stuff. I'm wearing purple sparkly eyeliner because it's that sort of day.

Tomorrow is Monday. I'm feeling a little trepidatious about Monday. I want to go to the library and do useful work. So that is what I shall try to do. I'm scared though. That's what I tried to do last week. I managed to write stuff on Monday and Tuesday, freaked out and barely tried on Wednesday and Thursday, got to the library and wrote about one sentence before panicking on Friday. Still, in the previous umpteen weeks, I'd done nothing, so that's got to be progress, right?

twirly

It's silly o'clock in the morning and I'm awake. The birds are singing and the sky is getting lighter.

I ache a little after getting knocked off my bike yesterday. I was overtaking another cyclist, who turned right, straight into me. I flew off, scraping my knees and elbow and smacking my head on the tarmac. Fortunately it was on Trinity Street, so there were no cars and I was wearing my helmet, which saved my head. I think I sort of went over the handlebars though, since there's a painful bruise on my stomach.

I'm not sure if pain woke me up, or strange dreams. I'm having lots of vivid dreams at the moment. This one was continuing the book I was reading yesterday. (The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill.) It's good, but a little more scary than I'm used to, somehow. Stopping in the middle, before anything's had a chance to be resolved is probably a recipe for unsettled dreams.

Curiously, in my dream, I knew it wasn't real. I knew God was in control and everything was going to be all right. Which is very comforting.

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

It's a bad day. I'm sitting in the library, staring at a computer screen, staring at my notes, my hands, my books, wondering what the point is. Today my brain feels fuzzy, my throat hurts. I feel unreal, as if everything I can see is an illusion, a mirage my hands would slip through if I tried to grasp it.

When will this end? When will I feel real again? When will the sun shine?

iLove

photo booth pic, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Hello there! I'm still alive and I now have a shiny shiny MacBook.

Thanks to everyone who's praying for me and being friendly. I'm still up and down, but on the whole more up than down and much better than I was a month or so ago.

can wombats swim?

Wom's been on his adventures again. Go and see.

monday morning comes around again

It's Monday. I woke up late this morning and I'm still sleepy. It's sort of sunny. It's been a good weekend. Spent Saturday knitting on Parker's Piece and listening to poetry. Yesterday was church and lunch out and an afternoon hanging out at a friend's house.

Life is still up and down. I'm very tired. Sometimes I'm OK. Sometimes I'm sad and fed up with life. There's not much else to report. I felt so much better after the lakes weekend, I thought things were going to be all better from there. But then I did too much, I think, made myself tired, went downhill again. Everybody's telling me to take care of myself, and I'm trying as best I can.

I'm still alive. I'm still breathing. I can still smile, sometimes. I wish I could cry.

decobwebbed

I've had a lovely weekend. I went up to the Lake District with lots of friends from church for a weekend of walking. I was a bit worried that I'd be too tired to enjoy it, but actually I had fun. I didn't push myself too hard and went slowly, but still managed to get up some steep hills and feel the wind in my hair. Sunday was the best day. We walked along Hay Stacks, above Buttermere. It was an incredibly windy day, the wind whipping up water from the tarns at the top and occasionally almost blowing us off the path. It felt so good to be blown about in the wind and to see all the beautiful hills and lakes. I felt more alive than I have in ages.

Now I'm back in Cambridge, feeling tired, but tired because I've done lots, rather than because I've done nothing much. I'm still going to take things slowly and not rush back into work and studying, but it does feel like I've turned a corner and things are getting better.

powered by prayer and prozac

Hello. I'm not dead, still alive. And the above is true, though when I say powered, I mean just about OK if a bit tired on a good day and hanging in there but exhausted and tearful on a bad day.

To fill you in. I had a fluey illness in late March, which wiped me out pretty completely. I've not really had much energy since then, I've been tired and feeling like I'm made of lead and fairly low. I first went to the doctors a couple of weeks after I first got ill because my cough symptoms were taking a long time to go and I knew something wasn't right. The doctor I saw then listened to my chest, told me I was fine and not to worry. So I went away. But although the cough went away, the tiredness and fuzziness and downness didn't. So I went back again a couple of weeks ago, saw a different doctor, told her how I felt, physically and mentally and she listened. A few weeks and some bloodtests later, we're beginning to make progress. It looks like the illness I had in March was glandular fever which would explain how much it wiped me out then and how tired I am now. I'm on antidepressants, as of a few days ago, so it'll be a while before they kick in. I'm applying to delay my uni essays until August since I haven't been able to do much work. On a bad day, I can barely read. I'm asking for help wherever I can, and getting it. Most of all, I've got lots of lovely friends around who are looking out for me and praying for me and being encouraging.

I'm still very up and down. I had a tiring weekend, with lots of walking and standing around on Saturday for Debs' MA graduation, singing in the worship band at church yesterday. I didn't sleep very well last night and woke up early, as usual. I think today may be a sitting on the settee not doing very much sort of day. It's going to take time to get better. Still, having admitted that life isn't OK right now and asked for help, there's a certain feeling of relief that I'm not on my own and I don't have to bottle stuff up inside and deal with it all by myself anymore.

I don't really know what's going to happen next. There's a PhD studentship I want to apply for, but the deadline is Friday and right now I'm not in the best frame of mind for selling myself as a wonderful research prospect. I can't even think coherently about my MA dissertation, yet alone a potential PhD one.

All I can do is keep on breathing.

clipped wings

The blog's been intermittent for a while now, hasn't it? It's probably going to stay that way. I hesitate to declare it dead. It may yet revive. But posts will continue to be light, until I feel a little better about life. I could use it to document how I feel, but that might become a little monotonous and I'm not a great sharer of my privacy.

If you want to say hello and don't already know where to find me, my email address is in my profile. Prayers and hellos gratefully received.

eating surrealists for breakfast

This morning, I seem to have lost all logic. My brain is working slowly and with a high degree of nonsense. This makes half-listening to the radio rather entertaining. If you half listen to Women's Hour with a fuzzy brain, they could be talking about anything, flying fish, lobsters, sheep. At the moment they're talking about women in the army, but I can't make it make sense. It's a sort of stream of sounds with the occasional noun which sticks out. You know the bit in Mrs Dalloway when the birds are speaking Greek? Today, that makes total sense to me.

one day I will have anough joie de vivre and imagination to write blog posts of dazzling wit and intelligence

Today is not that day.

ooh look, a book

Anna Broadway's blog Sexless in the City makes me laugh and scratch my head and laugh a bit more, being about the trials and tribulations of love and dating as a Christian girl. (The head-scratching is caused by my lack of knowledge of American dating culture, mostly). She hasn't blogged much for ages, but we'll forgive her because she's been writing a book (which you can pre-order here from Amazon.com. Not available on Amazon.co.uk currently. Dunno if it's going to be published over here, but maybe if enough people look interested...)

(And she's running a draw for a free copy if you mention her book in a blog post.)

And there's a book soundtrack on iTunes too. (Again, iTunes.com not iTunes.co.uk). Which intrigues me. It's rather UltraWordesque.

go and see

Wom is back

see pigs fly

If you go to Debs's blog you can

a) Tell her how lovely she looks

b) See if you agree with her about whether she needs a haircut

and

c) See the flying pigs I painted on our parents' dining room wall.

so tired

Tiredness seems to be the story of my life at the moment. I was sleepy at the beginning of the week, by Tuesday, sleepy had become ill. I spent Wednesday and Thursday mostly curled up inside reading Bleak House (which I can thoroughly recommend, ill or not). Today I'm a bit better, back in work, but rapidly running out of energy. I think I may be back on the settee with Esther Summerson this afternoon. So much for all the essay writing I was planning on doing. Maybe next week?

a very snowy Easter

The weather forecast threatened snow. I didn't believe it, until yesterday, driving to Melton Mowbray for a family lunch to celebrate my Grandad's 80th birthday, when we drove through patches of every kind of weather you can think of - rain, hail, snow flurries, bright sunshine, a low fuzzy rainbow across the motorway.

This morning, I woke up early and looked out to find the world covered in whiteness. I cycled to church slowly, enjoying the quietness of the roads, making the first tracks on the cycle paths.

By the time I left church, the peaceful atmosphere was shattered as the snow began to thaw into large slushy puddles. It wasn't what you expect to happen on Easter Sunday, but then, neither was the first one.

the internet cannot tell you who you are

Having a down and grumpy day, for no particular reason. So I'm sitting here playing with blogs and facebook and email and somehow expecting that to make me happier. And it doesn't. So I shall turn off the computer and go away and find something to do that might. Preferably something NOT involving food.

I went for a bike ride

beeches - roots, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

and I found a hill and some beech trees.

frustration

Life is mostly OK at the moment, but I'm frustrated by the fact that my back STILL hurts. After about 6 weeks. It's not as horribly painful as it was in the first couple of weeks, but I'm still not sleeping well and sitting is painful, which doesn't help my work get done.

On the positive side, I have a physio appointment on Monday morning, which is much sooner than I expected. And I do have some stuff to take at night which is supposed to deaden the nerve activity, though it hasn't noticably kicked in yet.

Patience, Bekki, patience.

earthquake?

I got woken up by an earthquake last night. Which is the sort of thing I'd expect my friend in Indonesia to blog about, but no, there was an eathquake in England last night. According to the BBC News website "The British Geological Survey (BGS) said the epicentre of the 5.3 magnitude quake was near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire."

I woke up because my bed was shaking. I wasn't entirely sure whether I was dreaming or being woken up by a large lorry going past or something. I checked the time, just in case it did turn out to be an earthquake and went back to sleep. So this morning, it was people's statuses on Facebook that confirmed what I'd felt and then the news. (hmm, what does that tell you about my media habits? Probably that on radio news you have to wait for headlines or news summaries to find out everything that's going on. Whereas with social networking, events that concern a large number of people in the same locality get reported almost instantly, like a small bunch of snapshots from your immediate locality.)

whee!

Yesterday was so much fun! I met a bunch of really interesting people, I wasn't (too) scared. I came away with loads of idea for my MA dissertation and (hopefully) future PhD. Yay!

struwwelpeter fingers

I'm feeling nervous and stressed. Whenever I do, there's this ache in my fingernails, like they're growing longer and longer with the tension and perhaps if I could just cut them off, the tension would go. (It doesn't, I have tried).

I'm nervous about the conference I'm going to tomorrow, not for the conference itself, but for the meeting I've arranged at lunchtime. I feel like I've got too many things to worry about and I don't know where to start, so I worry about which one to worry about first. Most of the things I'm worrying about involve reading, writing or both and worrying impairs my ability to read.

I need to remember Matthew 6 v25-34

25 Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

(ESV Bible Online)

fuzzy photographic proof

too early butterfly, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

cameraphone pic.

meet Wom

My sister HP and her boyfriend have a blog, Tales from Exeter, which sometimes chronicles the life of Wom the wombat. You really should go and take a look.

Part 1: Wom: A Life

Part 2: Wom's Grand Day Out

butterfly update

I found it under the radio when I was dusting. It was folded up and not moving. I thought it was dead, so I opened the window and threw it outside. It instantly wove up and fluttered down to the ground where it rested on the grass for a while. I hope the sunshine lasts long enough for it to find somewhere warm to sleep again before the cold gets to it. It's not really warm enough for butterflies yet.

february fluttering

I've just been surprised by a butterfly fluttering around my room. According to the UK butterflies website, it's a Small Tortoiseshell. Reading the page about it, it might have been hibernating in my room all winter and has now decided it's warm enough to emerge. It spent a few minutes flapping wildly at the window and is now settled between the radio and the window. I wonder what it'll do. Should I open the window and encourage it out or just leave it be? I don't regularly open that window at the moment, it's far too cold.

ETA: It's gone now. I don't know where.

you what?

Ashes to Ashes*, right? Silliest thing ever or pure-dead-brilliant-style-over-substance-must-watch tv? Can't decide.

Can't wait for the next episode.

*Yes, I'm a bit late, I'm catching up via iPlayer again.

fooled again

Just when you think spring is just around the corner, the weather changes its mind. Today I've been surrounded by fog all day. It's wet and it's cold. Urgh!

Still, it can't last forever. And the crocuses and daffodils are coming up regardless.

signs of spring

crocuses, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

As I cycled past the backs today, I noticed the crocuses were out behind St John's. Spring is coming!

(This picture is from last year.)

I'm OK

Thursday got better. Friday's been good, apart from an inexplicable face-ache which lasted about an hour and then went away again. A reaction to the cold wind? Sinus pain? I've no idea. Anyway, it went away and hasn't come back, so far.

I have finished knitting the jumper I started at Christmas! It's currently drying after a good bath. This should really be on the knitting blog, but that's currently on hiatus until I find a workaround to the not having a camera problem. Ho hum.

this must be thursday

It's not been a good day so far. The bad day actually began last night when I came to unlock my bike and discovered the lock was stuck. In a very silly, but impossible way. There was little point trying to fix it in the dark, so I left it until this morning. Today, I woke up later than I intended, managed to break a necklace and send beads all over the floor and in the process of clearing it up, knocked a vase of flowers over and spilt water all over the floor. When trying to throw the flowers in the green bin, I discovered the keys to the back door were at work because I'd discovered them in my pocket yesterday, not recognised them and decided someone at work must have put them in my coat pocket by mistake. (Seemed logical at the time, but rather less so now.)

I have now freed the bike, using nail clippers and tidied up the mess, but the whole business has left me feeling stressed and frustrated and unsettled before I've even done anything. And it's windy and raining, so I'm staying in the warm until the rain goes away, hoping nothing else breaks.

fear of museums

Yesterday I went to London for the day* and went to the Horniman Museum and Tate Modern. The Horniman is an intriguing museum in Forest Hill with an odd mixture of things - natural history displays of stuffed animals, ethnographic/anthropological collections, a huge collection of musical instruments, a lovely aquarium in the basement and lots of other stuff. It was the first two I found unsettling. I'd forgetton how much museums can freak me out. It's stuffed animals mostly, especially when there are cases close together, so that there's always another case directly behind you and when the lighting level is low. I know it's irrational, but it's a real effort to make myself walk round corners and look at things. I gave up on the natural history cases pretty quickly, although I did have a good look at the case of extinct birds (Dodo, Great Auk, Passenger pigeon etc, all with their sad stories) and the huge over-stuffed walrus. (Its skin is naturally loose and folded, but the person doing the taxidermy didn't know this and produced an immense beast which a smooth skin, which now sits proudly on an iceburg shaped plinth in the middle of the gallery.) The anthropological stuff in the centenary Gallery wasn't much better. Too many plaster heads and statues and more close together cases and low lighting. I fled in the end, much earlier than I'd meant.

Having rediscovered my museumphobia, I wondered again why I love the Pitt Rivers so much. It has everything that I ought to hate, not much room between the cases, low light levels, shrunken heads and statues. Maybe because it's a sort of test to myself to go in there. Maybe because it knows it's a bit scary and revels in it (there's a brilliant Tim Hunkin collection box in which anthropologists with red eyes point accusing fingers as you approach.)

The Tate is rather less scary on the face of it, but potentially just as unsettling. I duly followed Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth along the turbine hall floor and then wandered the galleries. I tried to resist finding old friends and look at new stuff. I spent a long time watching animations by William Kentridge. They're beautifully made with drawings in charcoal and pastels (I think), each drawing changing and dissolving, as bits are erased and redrawn, leaving palimpsests behind them as characters or objects move about. The short films are set in South Africa in the 80s and 90s, surreally depicting the activities of an exploitative businessman called Soho Eckstein. One memorable image is in Mine (1991) in which the plunger of a cafetiere pushed down by Eckstein lounging in bed pushes down and down, becoming the mineshaft, drilling away and creating the structures of slavery - the infamous plan of a slave ship, a half built pyramid, the showers and bunks of the mine.

Finally, I went and stared at a Mark Rothko. I don't think I've ever done that before. I remember one of my OU tutors talking about Rothko and saying of sitting and staring at his paintings for a long time "The damn things move!". I can see what he means now. I didn't spend as long as I'd have liked, the gallery was closing, but as I stared and moved round the painting and looked at it from close to and far away and from different angles, it seemed to change and shift. The gallery blurb describes the paintings as 'brooding', which seems fitting. Next time you're in London, go!

*Saying that feels weird. London's my home town, but it's not home anymore, Cambridge is. Last night someone asked where I was from and I said Cambridge because that's where I live now. It's true, but it feels odd.

ETA: One lovely thing about the Horniman is its gardens. Green spaces in London are always special; this one is at the top of a hill, with a gorgeous view across London, has a bandstand and an enclosure with goats and geese and chickens and a rabbit and lots of bits of interesting garden and sculpture. I sat on a bench and ate my lunch admiring the view. It was a little bit cold and damp, but I sat on a plastic bag and braved the odd stares of parents with pushchairs and dog walkers.

Another lovely thing is the aquarium, which was full of very small primary school children getting excited at fish and crabs and frogs (especially the bright blue poison arrow frogs.) My favourite thing in the whole museum is the jelly fish tank. There's a large white rectangular window with curved corners, inside which white moon jellyfish swim around against a deep blue background, illuminated by blueish (maybe UV?) light. The effect is simple, beautiful and abstract, fitting these gorgeous, otherworldy creatures.

it's done now

Despite all the obstacles, the essay's done, printed and handed in. Phew!

And I've been watching Dr Who. Don't even blink! Brilliant!

displacement

I have an essay which is due in tomorrow. It needs work. I've already had one deadline extension (just as well, I had no brain from Tuesday to Friday or thereabouts). I really need to get it mostly finished tonight so I can tidy it up in the morning.

So naturally, I'm blogging.

Hmm.

can I have my brain back please?

I think somebody stole it. I've spent another day feeling woozy and energy-less. I did do an hour's scribbling, but that's as close as I can get to working on my essay. I can't seem to focus properly. Probably I shouldn't even be trying, but even with a deadline extension to Monday, it feels like it's never going to get done.

Maybe another good night's sleep will help? I don't know. I'm beginning to despair of ever feeling normal again, but it can't last forever.

At least I can fill in time with my new favourite thing - BBC iPlayer. (Only, why does it not work with Firefox? Grr.) Last night I watched Sense and Sensibility and Pop! What is it good for?. Tonight, probably more of BBC4's pop analysis stuff and maybe some Dr Who. Comfort TV has got to be better than comfort eating.

the trouble with Austen

I do love a good costume drama romance. The current BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility being a case in point. I wonder though, whether they're quite good for one. However tangled and supense-filled the romantic upsets and twists and turns, there's always a happy ending, the heroine always finds her man, although she usually learns some important lessons on the way. Do they paint a picture that's too neat, too hopeful, too much certainty of finding love and marriage? Perhaps. But the process of learning is important too. Jane Austen's heroines don't get their husbands on a plate, they must learn and change first, whether that means leaving behind sily notions of gothic romance or wrong first impressions. It's the humanity of the process that makes the novels more than silly romances and that makes them last, as well as Austen's wit and narrative voice. Perhaps they're not a bad impression of finding love after all. I think it's just the apparent inevitabilty of the process that worries me. Hmm.

a little more time

I asked, I got an extension 'til Monday. I've been in bed all day, too woozy to read, so knitting. I hope an early night tonight will help too and I'll be able to do a bit of work tomorrow.

Hmm, this is a really boring blog at the moment, isn't it? Sorry.

fuzzy fuzzy clouds

If you're well enough to write coherent sentences but not well enough to structure an argument, are you ill enough to get a deadline extension?

If I don't feel better by tomorrow morning, I think I shall ask.

locked in the library

Not literally, but I've been here all day, working on the essay that's due in on Monday. I've made pretty good progress today. Nearly at 4000 words, another push tomorrow and it should be done, with a day in hand to tidy it up. At least that's the plan.

I now know more about Bartholomew Fair, William Poel and the Elizabethan stage company and Renaissance lath and plaster than I did this morning. And I have a slightly sore feeling throat which I hope is just the result of too much dry air conditioned air and not the start of something nasty.

My brain is quite tired. Home soon to wind down with knitting or a (non-work) book or just sleep.

It's 2008!

Happy New Year everybody!

just being

I'm sleepy. I'm having a travelling Christmas. So far I've been to Melton Mowbray and Cheltenham. Now I'm in Exeter for a New Year's Eve ball on Monday, but planning to spend some time sleeping, reading and maybe even essay writing before that.

It is quiet here in HP's house. Fe lives here all the time, but everyone else is home with their families, or otherwise elsewhere. HP herself is on the Isle of Wight. I do like the quiet dip between Christmas and New Year's Eve, it feels like a time when you can do anything and not feel like you should be working or tidying or otherwise being useful. Except that I do think I should do some essay-type work. But not right now, I'm far too sleepy. Radio 3 and the paper for me.

Merry Christmas

Tomorrow I'm off to my grandparents' house at the beginning of a cross-country journey of seeing family and friends, hopefully with some reading and essay-writing thrown in.

Have a wonderful Christmas, whatever you get up to.

wow!

I was trying to think of an apposite quotation, but my brain's too fuzzy. I've just got back from the English department trip to Stratford-upon-Avon after a fantastic couple of days watching plays and talking about them and it was such fun! I feel like I've been living in plays for the last couple of days and it's a real wrench to have to leave the world of kings and civil war and struggle and come home to real life.

We saw part of the cycle of history plays the RSC are doing at the moment: Richard II on Wednesday, and the two parts of Henry IV yesterday. It was amazing, seeing them in order, within a few hours of each other and seeing the big story and the smaller stories unfold in front of our eyes. I'd have loved to do as some others are doing and stay tonight for Henry V. Having seen the same actor (Geoffrey Streatfeild, brilliant) playing Hal and developing across yesterday's plays, it would be amazing to then see him play Henry today. We had a Q&A session with him this morning, really interesting to get an inside perspective on the role of Hal/Henry. But I had to come back and I'm probably a little too tired to appreciate another play tonight. A bunch of us are plotting to go and see it when the Histories come to London next year.

I'll try a more considered post when I'm more awake, but right now I'm just in awe of the plays and the performances and the feeling of being caught up in the sweep of history.

just in case you were worrying about it

My ear doesn't hurt any more. Feels weird, but doesn't actually hurt.

Off to Stratford tomorrow, er, today, so there might be a post about all the fun I've had and the plays I've seen sometime between now and Christmas. Not that I'm promising or anything.

ow ow ow

My ear hurts. I've had worse earaches, but it does hurt. That is all. Good night.

friday once again

Comes round every week, apparently.

Term ends today, well sort of. I had my last seminar of this calendar year yesterday, the next one's not until almost the end of January. Before then, quite a long while before then, I need to have written and handed in two 5000 word essays. It's been a while since I've written anything that long. Essay one might be fun, essay two I'm less sure about. Neither has been started yet, both will involve a lot more reading and thinking and note-making before the writing can begin. I forsee some last minute late night writing in early January. I'll try to minimise it, but there's only so much writing you can do over Christmas whilst visting family and friends.

Today I made some chocolate and ginger truffles (for Sunday morning's Christmas service. I allowed myself to eat one, but no more), bought things to wear for singing in the choir for Sunday evening's carol service, did some paid work, cooked and ate sort-of-Thai curry, finished the book I was reading and finished the cardigan I've been knitting for yonks.

Time for bed, I think.

ouch!

Just did one of my periodic going through receipts and wokring out how much money should be in my account and was alarmed to find that according to me I was overdrawn. Fortunately a cheque hasn't been cashed yet, so according to my bank I was still OK. A bit scary though. Had to transfer more money than I wanted to from my savings to my current account to make sure it's all covered. There are monies due to come in from various sources (like the deposit from the house I moved out of and pay for work I've done) and when they do, I'll be fine again, but right now I'm feeling very skint.

Eek. Lack of money is one of those things that really scares me. I'm not sure why exactly. Right, lesson learnt. I shall try to watch the pennies even more carefully from now on. At least I'm earning now.

I do love Nightwaves

Ooh, hooray for Anne Atkins. She's talking sense about the Bible in a discussion on Nightwaves with a man who's written a book about reclaiming the Bible from the political right for the left. And not in a good way since he wants to pick and chose the bits he likes (which he quite rightly points out is exactly what those on the right do) and identify with the rebels rather than the 'establishment' figures he who sees as having written it. And Anne is pointing out that you just can't do that, the Bible is a whole and to make sense of it, you have to submit to its authority.

Go and listen on the Nightwaves page, it'll be there for the next week. The bit about the Bible is about 30 minutes in, after the bit about the film abut Mark Chapman.

friday again?

Where did the week go?

I'm off to somewhere in Northamptonshire with lots of lovely people from church for our students and 20s weekend away. I'm looking forward to it.

Life's rather busy at the moment. 2 weeks of term are left, I've got to do some serious essay thinking, which is what I ought to be doing this weekend, if I wasn't going away.

What are YOU doing this weekend?

head in the cluds, nose in a book

Both are true, for once. I'm reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. And I'm loving it. I've got to finish it in time to prepare a presentation for Monday evening, but I don't think that'll be a problem. The finishing it bit, at least.

It's an intriguing book, made up of 6 nested narratives. I'm only 3 in, and beginning to see connections, but I'm sure there's more to come.

I was amused by a reference to someone "breastfeeding a hangover". Now I'm fairly sure that's some lazy editor deciding to do and find and replace with a US English to British English lexicon (i.e. nursing = breastfeeding). But there's an important plot point in the same section that turns on the boot of a VW Beetle not locking properly (mine never did) and it's definitely referred to as "the hood" or "the trunk". Hmm. It's the sort of tricksy novel in which you're never quite sure whether mistakes are deliberate or not. Or perhaps I'm too suspicious minded?

yay!

Debs rang me up! Yay! So lovely to hear my sister's voice, all the way from the other side of the world. Well, sort of. She sounds like she's having fun.

I am less tired than I was, though still a bit sleepy. It's been a sunny day, though I spent most of it inside alternating between reading Edward II and seaming a cardigan. Off to watch Derek Jarman's version soon, in preparation for tomorrow's seminar. Should give us lots to talk about.

fuzzy headed pig

I think I need more sleep. I had a good weekend, but kept fighting off the feeling of being tired and tearful. The former is probably the cause of the latter. I did attempt to get an early night last night, but it didn't really happen. I'm currently considering going home to curl up in bed with a book or three and probably fall asleep.

It's autumn. It's cold and grey and the leaves are all falling off the trees. I like autumn when it's sunny, but on grey days like this, I'd rather curl up and sleep.

today it's the Debs wot flies

Debs is off to Texas today to stay with Blest. On a big plane, to a big state in a big country.

Bye bye my lovely middle sister! Have a fantastic time and let us know what you're up to.

pig tales (again)

Amrita asked why 'pig wot flies'?

Here's an old post that sort of explains. It's the pig what flies, misspelt in the manner of Chad. I've been the pig wot flies (and knits) for so long now I forget that it's an odd name.

ow!

This post is all about my begging for sympathy, but never mind, it's my blog.

I fell off my bike. :-(. Entirely my own fault. I was going too fast, had to detour round a pedestrian and skidded on some wet leaves. My knee was the first thing that hit the ground. I scraped a hole in my jeans, scuffed my new shoes and my leather gloves (although they did save my hands from scrapes, so that's good.) The bike needs a new front brake cable and the front mud guard wires are even more bent out of shape than they were. A nurse at the uni medical centre cleaned up my knee, which now has an impressive plaster (and a dressing with silver in. I thought that was rather cool) and Mike's Bikes are fixing the bike. I planned to have a productive morning in the library reading The Duchess of Malfi and preparing for my presentation on Thursday, but after sorting myself and the bike out, opted for sitting down with a coffee and the internet until I feel better. The knee seems to be bleeding still, I hope it stops soon.

Can I have an aah?

where does the time go?

I am suddenly very sleepy. It's been a busy weekend, packing, cleaning, unpacking, organising, doing some work in between. Suddenly it's nearly time for today's seminar and I'm not entirely sure where the day went. By some miracle I have read the book (The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas) and at least the minimum set reading. It's a powerful and controversial book, so it should be an interesting seminar. I just wish I was awake enough to appreciate it. What have I done today? Went to the gym, picked up some stuff I left at the old place, drove to Emmaus (a rather long and circuitous route. I wasn't lost, just using creative navigation techniques. Or something), failed to find a useful bookcase, but did buy 2 books (a little counter-productive then), came home and cooked lunch, bought milk and bananas, cycled into uni, checked email and blogs. Suddenly, it's time to move again.

Plan - seminar, then probably Ceroc, then collapsing into bed.

Maybe tomorrow will be more organised.

pig wot flies' moving day

Today I've been packing and cleaning and preparing to move (not very far, just across town). Debs and my parents came to help, which was brilliant. I hate packing, it makes me feel stressed. I'm not officially moving out until Saturday, but we shifted lots of stuff today. There's some left, but I think I can cope with moving what's left on my own.

I don't like packing, but I do like unpacking and rearranging in new places, so there's that to look forward to this weekend. There's rather less bookshelf space in my new room, but more drawers and cupboards. Should be fun working out where everything's going to go.

disappearing Debs

Well.

You may have gathered this by now, but Debs is off to Texas very soon (on the 15th) to stay with Blest and help look after her tribe of boys. Flights have been booked, insurance is being sorted, lists are being made. It's all very exciting.

Debs is going to be away over Christmas, which will very weird for us and I'm guessing for her too. She'll be gone until February next year. Hopefully she'll have a wonderful time, won't miss us too too much and will keep us all informed with blogging and emails and the occasional phonecall.

Go my Debbie sister! I'm very proud of you for being brave enough to go miles and miles away (on a plane! First time on a plane and it's a long haul flight and changing planes and everything) to stay with people you've never met in, in a HUGE and unfamiliar place and not freaking out too much. Big big hugs.

stars of page and screen

Last week I read and adored Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Yesterday I watched and liked, but didn't love, the film of Stardust. It's easy to moan about how films never get books right and how they left all your favourite bits out and he just doesn't look like that. Films and books are different animals and there's no point expecting what you see on screen to be like the pictures in your head. Rather, I want to muse on the differences between the two Stardusts and the reasons for them.

Inevitably there are compressions of time. The book Tristran takes a year to wander Faerie and get back for the fair, where the film's Tristan has a week in which to bring back Victoria's birthday present. Characters and events are lost and the story becomes simplified to its essential details. We'll leave aside the silly camp pirates and the unnecessary Ricky Gervais cameo (the pirates were OK. There's a wonderful sword fight set to Offenbach's Can Can which is deliciously silly. Ricky Gervais I just don't like.)

One thing I did find interesting was that the film managed to be both less menacing and less innocent than the book. In Gaiman's Faerie, no-one is safe. People die, sometimes bloodily and it's a shock when they do. This creates a real tension and fear for the central characters. The usual fairytale guarantees that the good will end happily and the bad unhappily seem to be in doubt all the way through. The film puts back those conventions and there's no shock or real fear that the wrong person might die. Yet, there's a sort of innocence about the central pair of characters in the book that gets completely lost in the film. From the off, they're confidently exchanging insults and arguing and there's none of Tristran's tender standoffishness that I liked in the book. Inevitably, when they realise their love for one another, they fall into bed in a way which just wouldn't occur to their page-bound counterparts. Not that Gaiman's book is coy about sex, quite the opposite, but most of the earthier bits get cut out completely, which means in one case the death of one of the would-be Lords of Stormhold happens via a sub-Princess Bride scene of poisoned and switched goblets, rather than to the accompaniment of a barmaid's willing seduction.

The film's denouement is of course dramatic and full of explosions and swords and broken glass. The book's clever, but less dramatic end just wouldn't work for Hollywood, which is fair enough. And the good end happily and the bad, unhappily and all is well forever after, as you would expect. Still, on the whole, I think I prefer books to films of books, however good the latter are. There's always the shadow of 'The Book' hanging over a film of a book, which just isn't there with an original film. Unless the book is dreadful, in which case the film can only improve on it. Can you think of any examples where that is the case?

mutability

Whenever I go clothes shopping, I feel like a shape shifter. For one thing, I am smaller than I used to be. But still, guessing which size I am now and therefore which garments might fit is always tricky. In one shop or brand I'm one size, in another, something different. Add in the fact that I'm more than common tall, and sometimes it feels like nothing looks right. With each new top or skirt or pair of jeans, my body seems to shift and grow or shrink like Alice. I know it's the clothes that are variable, rather than me, but still, it's an unsettling feeling, as if my limbs and torso don't quite belong. A cropped jacket, for instance, looks totally ridiculous, flapping somewhere at the level of my bust and making me look like an overgrown toddler. Jeans that gap at the waist or bag at the crotch or are too short or (wonder of wonders) too long or just plain wrong.

I went shopping for jeans and failed to find any I liked. I did, however, find a hooded sweatshirt that was miraculously long enough in the arms and body and, though it has a kangaroo pocket, it's placed low enough that it doesn't look silly (sometimes they're placed so high they start just under the bust on me, most unflattering). And I bought new pyjamas, which are blessedly easy to get to fit, since they're fairly baggy and I don't care too much if the arms and legs are the right length.

you like me, you really like me

Aw, thanks guys. It seems you like the random mixture of things that appear here.

I shall endeavour to continue in randomness. :-)

trying to be sensible

This has never been a very sensible blog, has it? It's such a random mixture of moans and pictures and thoughts and questions. I wonder what it's for. Perhaps I should have more of a vision for what I want to do with it. Perhaps I should start a new blog for the sensible stuff (assuming I have something sensible to say about anything, which I'm not entirely sure I will). Perhaps I should just post things here.

I'll have a think. Does anyone have any comments? Why do you read pigwotflies? Is it because you've met me and/or are related to me and want to see what I'm up to? Because you find it amusing/intriguing/are dazzled by my insightful writing (I think not somehow)? Adrian got me blogging because he thought I'd like the intellectual discussion side of things. I've stayed out of the theological discussions he gets into, mostly because I don't think I've got much to add. But there are things I like talking about, books, art, science, philosophy. The discipline of turning a random thought into a short, coherent blog post might be useful.

Perhaps it's time to raise the bar of what makes the blog, rather than waffling on. And then, paradoxically, I might write more. Or I might intimidate myself and write less. Either way, I'd like to blog to some purpose, I think.

sunday night

I'm feeling better, thanks for the kind words and encouragement.

I like Sunday afternoons, anything feels possible. I've been for a walk along the river, admiring the autumn colours and the sunset. Now I'm listening to the Archers and soon I shall make some food and settle down to knit or watch Henry VIII or read something.

A new week is starting.

who stole my gorm?

Give it back, I need it.

I have no energy today, it's cold and wet and rainy and I've not really accomplished much today through lack of gorm.

I hope a good night's sleep will help.

happy birthday to me!

HP is staying for the weekend to celebrate with me, I'm having a party tonight, people are coming, we will have fun.

I like birthdays!

Nothing but curious pleasures

A certain BFC (aka big fat/fine cat aka my uncle Jon) asked about how I found Pericles etc, so here's the promised post.

I did finish reading Pericles. It's a bit like The Winter's Tale with added shipwrecks and no bears. I think I read it a little too fast to appreciate it properly. I'd like to see it performed. The structure's interesting - narration from Gower and dumbshows to show us what's going on. Most of the really dramatic action seems to take place in the dumbshows, except for the storm at sea in which Marina is born.

The main point of looking at Pericles for the seminar was the choices made in editing and we had a go at editing a bit of the beginning of 2.1, which was trickier than I thought, if you're going to worry about the placement of every jot and tittle as well as try to guess whether the apparent mistakes are due to misreadings, mishearings, uncertain spelling, archaic words or something else. I think my attitude would probably be to change as little as possible and work out the details in performance, repunctuating or substituting words as necessary to make sense of it. The way different editors differ over the placement of commas or the interpretation of ellisions sometimes seems a little far away from the text's first incarnation as a performance. But then, punctuation can make a huge difference to meaning, so it's not unimportant.

Yes, I did read all of Titus Andronicus, not just the fly-killing scene. It's a pretty gory piece of work. Again, I feel I need to see a production or two to appreciate it properly. I can't help wondering how things like "Enter the Empress' sons with LAVINIA, her hands cut off and her tongue cut out, and ravished" would be staged. The fly-killing scene (3.2) is a later addition to the play. I saw it as a private family scene, in contrast to the more public scenes that surround it. For some reason it my head it's like a scene from a film, very claustrophic and dark, with the Andronici gathered together, eating, because they need sustenance, comforting each other and gathering strength for their revenge. The camera plans along the table and flicks from face to face as they react to Titus's pouring out of his heart and attempted comfortings of Lavinia. The killing of the fly is like a summary of the entire play - "How if that fly had a father and a mother?" - that's the problem with killing people: their families generally want revenge and in this play that pits a father, Titus, and a mother, Tamora, against one another for revenge for their respective offspring. But of course "it was a black ill-favoured fly/ Like to the empress's Moor" so it had to die. There's the personal element of revenge and the tricky character of Aaron the Moor (also a father, in his own violent way). It's all wrapped up in those few lines. Hmm, perhaps I have more to say about Titus Andronicus than I thought?

And Cymbeline. I love Cymbeline! I really must read it. (And Jon, you MUST let me read your thesis). Yes, there were some bits that cut in the last production we saw that were included this time, notably the doctor with his suddenly remembered details, the comic jailers, Posthumous' family and Jupiter appearing from the heavens (actually appearing swathed in a giant silk parachute, rising out of the box which was the main consituent of the set. People found their costumes in it, props were taken out of and put into it, Iachimo hid in it, obviously. Actually I think it disappeared for a bit in Wales, which missed a few tricks, it could have been the cave, or the grave, or a boat, or cover for the battling armies.) Some other bits got missed out. Imogen's speech to the headless body of her (supposed) husband was even more truncated. It was a fun production, played for (even more) laughs than the Barbican production, with a wonderfully devious and scheming Queen. Although she did seem to go off her head rather too rapidly. Cloten began almost every one of his scenes by hurling his doublet to the ground and lived up to his name (definitely Clot-en).

On to this week. I'm currently supposed to be reading Dr Faustus, Mankind, extracts from Mediaeval morality plays and some scenes from Henry VI 3, King John and Macbeth. And it's pouring with rain and nothing could be nicer than curling up with some books and Radio 3.

ETA: I think part of the problem with the film of As You Like It were all the bits that got cut in the final scene, particularly Hymen (fair enough, no-one knows who Hymen is today anyway and what would she be doing in 19th Centuary Japan?), with some lines reassigned to Rosalind. Unfortunately they cut most of the 'If I were...would you then.." lines that explain how each character then reacts to the revelation of Ganymede's identity as Rosaline, so to have everyone suddenly understanding when she appeared dressed as herself again made very little sense. I don't think As You Like It makes that much sense to start with, but it's a comedy and believing in the character's rather unlikely deceptions is part of the fun.

head in a spin

It's been a bit of a stressful weekend. We've been trying to find a third person to share our house for ages, to no avail. So many people have come and looked and liked and then decided to live elsewhere. A solution of sorts may have been found, but it's not all sorted yet. If you're the praying kind, please can you pray for wisdom and God's direction in knowing what to do? Particularly that if what I'm trying to sort out right now is the wrong thing to do, that God will firmly shut that door.

Sorry to be cryptic, I just don't want to tell the world everything.

apologies

To the dozen or so people who sent emails to my gmail address. Emails which I have only just discovered because I hardly ever check that email inbox.

I think I have too many email addresses.

underestimate

I've just been asked for ID buying wine (and other things) at the Co-op. To be asked whether one is over 18, a week or so before one turns 28, is flattering, I suppose. But I was feeling all grown up and sophisticated in my new coat and favourite boots. The woman at the cash desk was apologetic and decided it was a sign she was getting old.

shakespeare week

That's what it feels like right now. Yesterday I saw As You Like it* tonight I'm going to see Cymbeline. I'm halfway through reading Romeo and Juliet, I've got to finish that and Pericles by Thuirsday evening and have something coherent to say about the fly-killing scene in Titus Andronicus. And I've been reading Making Shakespeare by Tiffany Stern.

I am happy! :-)

* It was OK, the lead actors are good, particularly Bryce Dallas Howard as Rosalind, but somehow it doesn't sparkle as it should and it doesn't quite make sense to me, at a psychological level, particularly at the end when all the couples are matched up. I'm not sure whether that's the play's fault or the way the film chops it around. I'll have to read it again.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Look look! Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on Radio 4.

Big silly grin.

today I am mostly...

...reading Ulysses. Trying to see how much of it I can get read in one day.

So far today, I've also broken a glass and sent shards of glass all over the kitchen, re-wired the vacuum cleaner plug so that I could clean it up, washed everything on the kitchen worktop that got covered in little bits of glass, checked my emails, sent party invites on Facebook, registered for a conference and written a blog post to tell the whole world what I've done.

So not a lot of reading then.

black swan

I've just come back from seeing Atonement which is beautiful and sad. Which is all I can think to say about it at the moment.

Except that the music is wonderful in the way it draws together atmosphere and sound and the feelings of the moment and the sound of the typewriter, drumming away at the beginning and returning again and again and the sound of repeated notes in the piano and the buzzing of a fly creating the oppressive heat of a summer afternoon.

I think it's got into my prose style a little. All that brittle wartime dialogue in cut glass accents.

I came the long and scenic way home, feeling the need for sunshine and air and the wind in my face. It had rained while I was in the cinema and the sky was fresh and full of crepuscular clouds. Dashing along the river, I saw a black swan. I stopped, it cried, just once, and swam on. I remembered how as a child I thought all swans were black because the ones in the park were and how excited I would be to see white swans. Today, to see a black swan was somehow thrilling and alive-making. On home, as fast I could across the common, past the cows and the evening sun dazzling straight in my face.

Now home, where it's warmer, a little and the pears next door are hanging heavy. Are they ripe yet?

science in art

I'm just finished reading The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas. It's a fun read, concerning the investigations of PhD student Ariel into a mysterious novel, reputed to be cursed, also called The End of Mr. Y by an odd Victorian scientist called Thomas Lumas. The first few chapters felt like Thomas had stolen my ideas of what I wanted to do with my life and given them to her character. Ariel goes to a lecture by Prof. Burlem on Lumas, and after it, he offers her a PhD project based in a Literature department looking at the history of thought experiments. (If only...) As the novel begins, Burlem has disappeared, a building at the university has collapsed (apparently to no-one's great suprise) and on her way home, Ariel finds a copy of Lumas' cursed novel in a box of books in a second hand shop, which she quickly buys, before the shop assistant can realise its value. Chapters from Lumas' novel alternate with Ariel's first person narrative of her, rather dark and gloomy, life. (I was amused to notice that Ariel, like the heroine of Thomas' previous novel PopCo and Thomas herself, eats a vegan diet. This is mostly irrelevent to the plot apart from the fact that as an impoverished PhD student, Ariel can afford to buy very little food, although I'm sure a dietician would have something to say about the perils of surviving on potatoes, dark chocolate, black coffee and slivovitz.)

The collapsed building is a means for introducing to Ariel's department office a evolutionary biologist and a theologian. Here things start to clunk a little. An impromptu dinner party is the scene for a discussion of origins and truth. The themes are relevant, but I don't think they're handled very well. If you want to write a novel which explores theoretical physics, philosophy and multiple dimensions, then you're going to need to explain them somehow, but how exactly is tricky. Giving differing philosophical positions to different characters is usually how it works (David Lodge does it rather well) but somehow it didn't quite work for me. The theologian character, Adam, becomes more important by the end of the novel, but the biologist seems to be there only to be to impart some information about science and then fades into the background.

It's a highly fantastical novel and by the end we've left reality far behind. I did like the unravelling of Ariel as a character. At the beginning, I wasn't sure I liked her. By the end, she had become rounded out and understandable, as facts and snippets of her past life were revealed. It's an odd mixture of quantum theory, Baudrillard, time travel, Heidegger and a whole string of literary theorists and philosophers, predictable in some aspects (start with quantum indeterminacy and a world constructed from langauge and see where you end up) but ends up in some unexpected places. The effect is a little confused, as if too many ideas got thrown into the the mix. It reminded me of PopCo by the same author and of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

I'm vaguely thinking about dissertation ideas at the moment and thinking about doing something about how scientific ideas get used in literature. I'm not sure if this novel is typical of the sort of thing I want to investigate. More data needed, I think.

bye bye work, hello uni

Today's been a weird day, for good reasons. I had my official last day at work and my first contact with the other students and the lecturers for my new course. Leaving work for the last time, having said goodbye to everybody (and eaten a delicious, if rather large lunch) was odd. I'm both happy and sad to be leaving, which I suppose is a good position in which to be. I did spend quite a lot of the afternoon trying to cram all the contents of my brain into the brain of the person who's replacing me, which was a bit much, both for her and for me. We didn't quite cover everything, I've promised to write her some more notes. It's only when I had to explain all the things I did in my job that I realised quite how complicated it all was and how much I just do without thinking.

And now I'm a student. Not just that, but I'm an ARTS student for the first time in my life. All those jokes we used to make about lazy arts students with two lectures a week who never got out of bed before noon are now coming back to haunt me. I'm definitely the only person on my course with a Physics degree. Everyone else has come from English or History or other Humanities subjects. And so far there are no men. Some are apparently enrolled on the course, but none of them turned up tonight. It's a long way from those lecture hall and demonstration labs where my lab partner and I were distinctly outnumbered by male physicists.* It's all different. But different is exciting and I'm very very excited and happy to be finally starting!

*Who don't all conform to the geeky stereotype. But many do.

talk talk

So, I've just been speed-dating. And it was OK. I think I've introduced myself and explained who I am more times in the last few hours than I have since I was last a Fresher (hmm, I suppose I'm technically one of those again). But it was a good evening and some of the guys I met were interesting in an "I'd like to talk to you again" sort of way and some of them were interesting in an "I'm sure you're lovely but we have nothing in common" sort of way and all of them were friendly. So, we'll see what happens. But I'm glad I went.

...and collapse in a heap

This has been a very very busy and stressful week and I'm so glad it's over.
In a sense it's not as I've got 2 days left at work, one tomorrow and my last day on Thursday. But the weekend conference I've been preparing for all week is over and I get to go home and relax (i.e. collapse in a heap, have a bath and curl up on the settee with a good film, not got the brain power for reading).

And very very soon I will be a full time student and not be trying to concentrate on a full time job and studying all at once. Hooray!

cows and sky

cows and sky, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

The view across Coldham's Common as I cycled to work this morning.

bad day, good food

Yesterday was not a good day. A situation at work made me angry enough to have to walk out of the office and go and kick apples around in the college grounds and ring my mum who calmed me down. It's still not really sorted, but I'm less stressed now.

On the good side, I went into town for lunch and wandered round the market. The stalls were full of wonderful fruit and veg, so many beautiful fresh things to eat, including fresh figs. I've eaten figs once before, but I'd never cooked them myself, so I decided to buy a few. I'd never realised how beautiful and delicate they are. A little googling found me some recipes. I tried a couple out.

For my main course I roasted a fig in the oven with some goat cheese, rosemary from the bush outside our back door and a few walnuts. Heavenly! I've never tasted anything quite like it. The cheese and herb flavours complemented the taste and fleshy, succulent texture beautifully.

Then for dessert, I poached a fig in some red wine, with cinnamon. I ate it with a dollop of greek yoghurt. It wasn't quite as luxuriously melting as the roasted fig, but still beautiful.

There's one fig left in my fridge. They're so delicate it won't keep for long. I might try roasting it with nuts and honey, or maybe goat cheese again.

Mmmm, I think I have a new favourite food.

counting the days down

Until I leave my current job and become a proper student again. (Rather than an improper one?) It's going to be a busy week. My replacement starts tomorrow, so we've got a week or so handover period. I'm not really sure where to start. In the past I've just left jobs (generally remembering to tidy up before I left) but I've never had to 'train up' my replacement before. Not that training's exactly the word, more showing someone round all the things I do and making sure there aren't any things that are obvious to me that noone else knows. So that's this week, much busy-ness at work, my last Open University essay to be written, maybe even some reading for my new course to be done.

It's been an undramatic weekend. We didn't go and buy bookcases, there were no nasty suprises, I didn't catch up on sleep (indeed got even less sleep than usual due to someone playing songs about threshing machines and oompah bands at 2.30am).

It's not that life is dull, just that I've nothing very entertaining to say about it. Maybe in a few weeks time I will. Maybe I won't. Who can say.

pathetic really

I'm annoyed because I want to check my emails and hotmail isn't loading properly. It's not as if I'm likely to have any urgent emails. It's just bothersome. Humph.

ETA: It's back again now. Hooray! And no, there were no emails of any great pith or moment.

september I'll remember

It feels like autumn. Cycling to and from work, there's a definite chill in the air. I went blackberrying on the way home yesterday and somehow it wasn't as much fun as it was in August when it was sunny and warm. All the easy berries had gone and though there are still many more to come, there's not that feeling of abundant fruit anymore. And I got stung by nettles and stood in a cow pat which is enough to make anyone feel grumpy.

Still, I like autumn. Brisk cold sunny days, wearing skirts and boots and jumpers. I'm in need of jumpers, I've slimmed out of last year's. Two weeks or so left at work, one essay left to write for my OU course, a stack of books to read for my MA course. Back to being a full-time student again, back to being penniless again.

It's going to be a busy month, this September.